Network systems are utilized as communication links for everyday personal and business purposes. With the growth of network systems, particularly the Internet, and the advancement of computer hardware and software technology, network use ranges from simple communication exchanges such as electronic mail to more complex and data intensive communication sessions such as web browsing, electronic commerce, and numerous other electronic network services such as Internet voice, and Internet video-on-demand. Network usage is of particular interest to Network Service Providers (NSPs) that provide these capabilities by interlinking with each other and providing access services to their customers (herein also referred to as users or subscribers). This world wide interconnection of NSPs and the ability for individual users to access the Internet are based on the acceptance of the Internet Protocol (IP), which is now a world-wide standard.
Network usage data is useful for many important business functions, such as subscriber billing, marketing & customer care, product development, network operations management, network and systems capacity planning, and security.
Network usage data does not include the actual information exchanged in a communications session between parties, but rather includes numerous usage detail records (UDRs) containing one or more types of metadata (i.e., “data about data”). The types of metadata included within each UDR will vary based on the type of service and network involved, and in some cases, based on the particular network device providing the UDRS. In general, a UDR provides very detailed usage information about a particular event or communications connection between parties, such as the connection start time and stop time, source (or originator) of the data being transported, the destination or receiver of the data, and the amount of data transferred. A UDR summarizes usage information for very short periods of time (from milliseconds to seconds, occasionally minutes). Depending on the type of service and network involved, a UDR may also include information about the transfer protocol, the type of data transferred, the type of service (ToS) provided, etc. In telephony networks, the UDRs that make up the usage information are referred to as call detail records (CDRs). In Internet networks, UDRs do not yet have a standardized name, but will be referred to herein as UDRs. As used herein, the term “UDR” is defined as a small unit of measure of unidirectional network usage by a stream of IP packets that share common source and destination parameters during a time interval.
Network usage analysis systems process these UDRs and generate reports or summarized data files that support the above business functions. Network usage analysis systems provide information about how a Service Provider's services are being used and by whom. Network usage analysis systems can also be used to identify (or predict) customer satisfaction-related issues, such as those caused by network congestion and network security abuse. In one example, network utilization and performance (as a function of subscriber usage behavior) may be monitored to track the “user experience,” to forecast future network capacity, or to identify usage behavior indicative of network abuse, fraud and theft.
However, a need exists for a simple and reliable mechanism for detecting and predicting network congestion, among other advantages.